Upland Outlaws by Dave Duncan Page A

world?” Her plump face bulged in an excited smile.
    The imperor turned to the king of Krasnegar, who shrugged and nodded at the same time. “Why not?”
    Shandie smiled. “Doctor Sagorn?”
    The jotunn did not take his gaze from the ancient scroll he was studying. “Brilliant!”
    “I agree, Sire,” Acopulo said without waiting to be asked. He pointed at some wording on the vellum, and his two companions nodded excitedly.
    “Ylo?”
    Ylo nodded-what choice was there?
    “It appears to be unanimous! ” the imperor said. “Ma’am?” the faun asked, rising to his feet.
    Eshiala had apparently been engrossed in entertaining Maya, but she looked up at the king. “A just cause is a nobler purpose than mere survival,” she said hesitantly, and blushed.
    Shandie drew a long breath. “Well put, my dear. So, my sorcerous friend! My own view is that it’s a mirage of absurd idealism. It’s the most impractical, visionary, utopian dream 1 ever heard of. But, as my wife says, it is worth fighting for! “
    “It’s also the only chance we’ve got!” Rap said.
    “That, too!” Smiling, the imperor walked across to him and shook his hand.
    “Certainly!” Inos said. “Of course there are some things worth fighting for. “
    Could a thirty-five-year-old mother and a fourteen-year-old son ever agree on what those things were?
    Gath was in his bed, and she was seated on the edge of it. Despite her thick fur robe, she was chilled. Her breath hung in the air like steam. Ice coated the leading between the black little casement panes. Yet many bedchambers in Krasnegar were colder. Peat glowed brightly in the hearth here, but few citizens could afford that princely luxury, especially this winter, when peat was scarce.
    Only the tip of Gath’s nose protruded between his woolly nightcap and a huge drift of downy quilts. Even in the tiny candlelight, the tip of it was visibly pink, but at least it was undamaged. Hostile and suspicious, one gray eye peered up at her out of nests of many-colored swellings. The other was covered with a slab of steak. The broken tooth annoyed her most, though, and he was keeping that out of sight.
    “Like Dad,” he said stubbornly. “Dad’s worth fighting for!” She sighed, searching for reasons that would make sense to him.
    Downstairs, the dinner party continued. It was turning out to be very subdued for an affair attended by twenty-five adolescents, lacking its host and one guest. The medics said Brak would be all right, but no one could mend a boy’s broken tooth except a sorcerer, and the one sorcerer she knew almost certainly wouldn’t. Most likely it would abscess and have to come out. All her life, she was going to recall this day every time her son opened his mouth.
    “Your father is worth fighting for, of course. But you weren’t fighting for him, Gath! He wasn’t there. If he was in danger from a bear, or goblins, or a gang of raiders, then you would be right to go to his aid and fight for him. That wasn’t what happened. You were fighting because someone called him names, and that’s not the same thing at all. “
    He stared at her stubbornly, saying nothing. This lecture was a father’s duty, not a mother’s. He probably knew exactly how long it was going to continue, and every word she was going to say. He was hurting, inside and out, his doubts worse than his wounds. Doubts about himself, doubts about her, doubts about his father.
    “What exactly did Brak say?”
    “He said … He said my dad had run away to live with the goblins. He said he had goblin wives.”
    “Do you believe that?”
    “Course not! ” But the pain in his solitary eye increased. Doubt.
    “Did Brak say he was a sorcerer?”
    Gath thought for a moment. “Not today.”
    “What do you answer if the boys say that about your father?”
    “I say, `What if he is? That’s his business.’ “
    “That’s a good answer, a very good answer, because it’s true. But your father’s a king, and if his